Rigid bollards in Edmonton, Alberta. A simple way of keeping people on foot from getting crushed to death by errant cars on a busy road. Why exactly don't we do this in Austin?!

I spent years being frustrated at how hard it was to safely cross Lamar from the Triangle. And now it's been fixed! Dozens of small changes like this plus the explosion of e-bikes could transform how people get around Austin.

I’m normally a “take the half a loaf” kinda guy, but this proposal is borderline insulting to all of the people here who need relief from a brutal housing market. City Council, do better. FIN.

Single-family houses would STILL emit a force field from 100s of ' away that would magically lop off the tops of any would-be apt bldgs with the temerity to be tall enough to take advantage of billions of $’s worth of planned bus, light rail, bike lane, and sidewalk upgrades. 5/X.

That is NOT what this compromise would do. Austin would STILL have more stringent compatibility requirements post-reform than San Antonio, Dallas, Kansas City, Charlotte and a bunch of other big cities not known for their radical agendas to smash NIMBYism to bits. 4/X.

But the Austin Bargain® was supposed to mean that Austin’s pampered single-family homeowners continue to be left alone in return for them agreeing to let ‘er rip on the corridors with big multifamily developments. 3/X.

I’m going to leave aside single-family/duplex zoning being left untouched—I acknowledge that’s an inevitability in Austin for the foreseeable future. Plenty of other US cities are taking it on, but we’re not going to—that sucks, but it is what it is. 2/X.

THREAD: City Council’s proposed compromise to allow more housing on the corridors makes me want to tear (what’s left of) my hair out. 1/X

Best journalistic treatment of "valid petitions" in Austin I've yet seen. With some great big-picture quotes from @ConnollyJoao and @DanKeshet

I mean, I was expecting Austin to be bonkers, but having it be ahead of all of the other tiny metros in the data set but one shocked me. Austin is to the 2020s what Los Angeles and Detroit were to the 1920s.

So I just pulled ZHVI data from Zillow on home prices for 902 US metros, comparing right now to Feb 2020. Austin is the NUMBER TWO metro, with a 65% (!!) increase. #1 is tiny (Kalispell, +74%). The runnerup large metro is Phoenix (+52%). Jaw. On. Floor.

Even though we're months away from Halloween, I still talked about ghost dwellings with @ShaneDPhillips and @MichaelManvill6 on the UCLA Housing Voice podcast.

"Austin's Land Development Code: keeping Missing Middle missing since 1984.".

In case you're wondering what Austin's current Land Development Code (1984) did to missing middle development--it kneecapped it. (Graphic from @courtney_banker)

So humid out this morning that there's a film of combined pollen and condensation on the window. You do not love to see it.

I think a *lot* of people in this country would like to live in or near a suburban downtown that looks like these pictures of Redmond. There is absolutely zero reason why all suburbs have to continue to be what we think of as "suburban.".

"You can't tell me to not tell my neighbor what to do with their land!" 2/2.

From @JackCraver's newsletter. The "valid petition" law in TX has just blown my mind since I learned about it a few years ago. California, the world capital of NIMBYism, has nothing remotely similar. So much for TX being the land of unrestrained private property rights. 1/2

And in case that wording is ambiguous--you can get your shot immediately.